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Finding a business that has the potential to grow substantially is not easy, but it is possible if we look at a few key financial metrics. One common approach is to try and find a company with returns on capital employed (ROCE) that are increasing, in conjunction with a growing amount of capital employed. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. That's why when we briefly looked at HP's (NYSE:HPQ) ROCE trend, we were very happy with what we saw.
What Is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?
Just to clarify if you're unsure, ROCE is a metric for evaluating how much pre-tax income (in percentage terms) a company earns on the capital invested in its business. The formula for this calculation on HP is:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.46 = US$5.8b ÷ (US$39b - US$27b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to July 2022).
Therefore, HP has an ROCE of 46%. That's a fantastic return and not only that, it outpaces the average of 10% earned by companies in a similar industry.
See our latest analysis for HP
In the above chart we have measured HP's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free report on analyst forecasts for the company.
So How Is HP's ROCE Trending?
We'd be pretty happy with returns on capital like HP. Over the past five years, ROCE has remained relatively flat at around 46% and the business has deployed 26% more capital into its operations. With returns that high, it's great that the business can continually reinvest its money at such appealing rates of return. If these trends can continue, it wouldn't surprise us if the company became a multi-bagger.
Another thing to note, HP has a high ratio of current liabilities to total assets of 68%. This effectively means that suppliers (or short-term creditors) are funding a large portion of the business, so just be aware that this can introduce some elements of risk. While it's not necessarily a bad thing, it can be beneficial if this ratio is lower.
Our Take On HP's ROCE
In summary, we're delighted to see that HP has been compounding returns by reinvesting at consistently high rates of return, as these are common traits of a multi-bagger. And since the stock has risen strongly over the last five years, it appears the market might expect this trend to continue. So even though the stock might be more "expensive" than it was before, we think the strong fundamentals warrant this stock for further research.